“Did you honestly spend £60 on that cushion for my mother?”
“Pity I didn’t hold it over the old monster’s face,” said Janey.
The tax man and the builders were also hustling for payment. Another shock was that the £21,000 advance on the manuscript was divided into three: £7,000 on signature, £7,000 on delivery, and £7,000 on publication.
“How soon do you think you’ll deliver?” asked Billy.
The original date had been March, but Janey, who’d made only a few random notes, said there wouldn’t be a hope before the summer, which meant that autumn publication was very unlikely.
Janey had no idea, either, of the astronomical cost of running and traveling a string of horses, nor was she any good as a backup team. She kept forgetting to post entry forms, which meant Billy drove two hundred miles to a show to find he wasn’t eligible to compete. Often, fast-talking got him in, sometimes, it didn’t. Billy was one of the best riders in England, but he was not a natural jockey, like Rupert. He had to work at it and keep schooling his horses to get really good results. Nor did Janey understand Billy’s temperament: that he lacked self-confidence, and needed to be kept very calm before a big class. Rows and requests for money sapped his concentration. He needed to distance himself and, with a lovely wife in a warm bed at home, he tended to spend less time in the indoor school at night and to get up later in the morning.
In March, he came home from a three-week trip abroad. He’d missed Janey desperately and deliberately rang her at Southampton to say he’d be home in time for dinner, adding, rather plaintively, that he hadn’t eaten all day. As he settled the horses at Rupert’s, a marvelous smell of boeuf bourgignon drifted out of the kitchen, and he wondered if Janey would be cooking something nice for him. As he came up to the front door he tripped over a pile of milk bottles. The place stank of cat, not rabbit stew, and as he took the last finger of whisky to the sink to fill the glass up with water, he found it full of dirty dishes. The dishwasher had broken, explained Janey; the man hadn’t come to mend it yet. As he went back into the drawing room, he noticed the drink rings on the Georgian table Helen had given them as a wedding present. The place looked rather as Penscombe used to before Helen came and tidied it up. Somehow, these days, mess got on his nerves. He had had a bad week, hardly in the money at all. He tried to ignore the pile of brown envelopes unopened on the hall table. There was no more whisky; only vodka, but no tonic.
“Drink it with orange squash.”
“I’m starving.”
“I’m sorry, darling. I forgot to get anything in, and it was too late by the time you rang. Let’s go out.”
“Too bloody expensive. I’ll have some cornflakes.”
Billy’s stomach was churning painfully. He wondered if he were getting an ulcer. He had an early start in the morning. He went upstairs; the hot cupboard was bare, and there was nothing in his drawers.
“Have I got any clean shirts or breeches?”
“Oh, Christ,” said Janey, clutching her head, “I left them in the launderette in Stroud. The washing machine’s up the spout, too.”
“What time do they open?”
“About eight-thirty.”
“I’ve got to leave at six.”
“I’m sorry, darling, truly I am. Look, give me your breeches and shirts and I’ll wash them by hand. Then we can dry them in front of the fire, and I’ll get up early and iron them.”
“It’s all right. I’ll borrow some from Rupert. I’m only away for a couple of days this time.”
“I’m desperately sorry,” said Janey, suddenly catching sight of two unposted entry forms in her out-tray and shuffling them under a pile of papers. “I’m going to mix you a nice drink.”
After two glasses of vodka and orange squash, which didn’t taste so bad after all, Billy felt fortified enough to open the brown envelopes.
“Janey, darling,” he said, five minutes later, “we shall simply have to pull our horns in. These bills are frightful.”
“Can’t you take a trip to Château Kitsch? Harold Evans caught a finch in the herb garden today and came in with his mouth full of chives and parsley. He’s also got a liver complaint.”
Billy looked up, alarmed. “Have you taken him to the vet then?”
Janey giggled. “No, he’s complaining there’s not enough liver.”
Billy grinned, but was not to be deflected.
“Sweetheart, we must try and cut down. We don’t need a swimming pool. We simply can’t afford the deposit, or even less, to pay for it when it’s finished.”
Janey pouted. “It’ll be so nice for you to flop into the pool when you come back from shows.”
“There’s only about three months a year warm enough to do that in Gloucestershire.”
“I’ve been trying to economize. Mrs. Bodkin’s got flu, and I took her a bunch of daffodils without leaves today, because they were twenty p cheaper.”
“But we haven’t been really living it down, have we? There are five half-opened tins of cat food gathering mold on top of the fridge and Mavis really doesn’t need half a chicken every day. She’s getting awfully fat.”
“Well, Badger often drops in for lunch. You know how Helen starves those dogs.”
“I think we ought to cut down Mrs. Bodkin to half a day a week,” said Billy, ignoring Janey’s frown. “And give up Miss Hawkins. You could do my fan mail.”
“Do your fan mail?” said Janey, outraged. “What about my fan mail?”
“Just for a little, till we get straight.”
Janey started to get angry and hysterical. “I’ve got to finish this book. It’s got to be handed in by July. I haven’t got time for anything else. I’m writing every day. I get up at eight and I’ve only just finished this evening. Stupid not to grab inspiration when it takes you.”
She didn’t point out that most of that day had been spent drinking coffee, and later whisky, with one of the builders. After all, she rationalized, she had to get the rough-trade view for her book somehow.
“I know, darling,” said Billy soothingly. “All I’m saying is that we must not do any more to the house at the moment.”
“Go to Kev,” said Janey, emptying the last of the vodka into his glass. “Kev will provide, the great ape. I’m going to make you some scrambled eggs.” She went towards the kitchen. “I say,” she popped her head round the door a moment later, “Helen gave me a chapter of her novel to read today.”
“Any good?”
“She can’t write ‘Bum’ on a wall. She said, ‘Janey, I want you to be real honest with me,’ which meant she wanted me to lie convincingly. She told me a much funnier thing today. She’s got frightfully thick with the new vicar, and evidently when Rupert flew back from Geneva for the night last week, he found the vicar holding a Lenten meeting in the drawing room, with everyone, including Badger, meditating with their eyes shut.”
Billy laughed. “Rupe told me.”
He wandered into the kitchen, trying not to notice the mess or the way Janey threw the eggshells into a huge box, where they joined about a hundred other eggshells. That must account for the odd smell. He picked up a jar of coffee on the dresser and looked at the price. “Christ, coffee’s expensive. I’m going to drink liquor in future.”
Janey came and put her arms round him: “I do love you,” she said. “Don’t worry about money, I’ve got a lovely bottle of St. Emilion.”
After three huge vodkas and a bottle of St. Emilion, the problem didn’t seem so bad. Billy would ride with panache, Janey would write like a maniac while he was away. They would soon get out of their mess.
Spring came, more longed-for than ever after the hardness of the winter, and the woods were filled with violets, anemones, primroses, and birdsong. Chaucer’s people thought about pilgrimages; Janey thought about new clothes. The wild garlic made her feel homesick for drunken lunches in Soho. She knew marriage to Billy was far more precious and durable, but she missed the jokes and the gossip. She lived on the telephone to her mother. She was finding it increasingly difficult to buckle down to her book. She was used to the weekly clapping of journalism, the steady fan mail, people coming up to her at parties and saying, “You were a bit near the knuckle last week.”
In the country, there was no second post, no Evening Standard, no Capital Radio; she found it difficult to get used to the slow rhythms. Gloucestershire was a soporific county and she found herself falling asleep in the afternoon. She had her fallopian tubes blown, which was not really painful, but affected her more than she expected. She sank into despondency; and to premenstrual tension was added postmenstrual depression, when she found she wasn’t pregnant.
One afternoon Billy’s mother dropped in with a bridge friend. The cottage looked awful. There was no cake, only some stale bread, no jam, and a teapot already full of leaves. Mrs. Lloyd-Foxe followed her into the kitchen.
“Any news?” she asked. Janey shook her head, but was so upset that she burnt the toast.
“What a beautiful view,” said the bridge friend, looking out of the window.
“The only views I like these days,” said Janey, “are my own.”
The bills poured in. Janey’s tax bill arrived and Billy realized that, as her husband, he was liable for an extra £15,000, with a further £3,000 owing to VAT-man.
Every time Janey went shopping, wherever she looked, baby clothes seemed to be mocking her. She seemed to be alone in a world of mothers. She took her temperature and wrote it down on the back of a Christmas card every day, and Billy was supposed to leap on her when her temperature went up. But invariably she’d mislaid the card or Billy wasn’t there on the right day.
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